In the province of Cadiz there are three towns which form the famous 'sherry triangle' of Spain: Jerez de la Frontera, Sanlucar de Barrameda, and El Puerto de Santa Maria. Any bottle labelled as 'sherry' must have come from this region, which has been producing wines since the times of the Phoenicians (1100BC). Having had absolutely no appreciation for sherry in the past, I decided to visit a bodega in Jerez to sample some different types and educate my palate.
Arriving on a sunny May bank holiday, I went to the Gonzalez Byass bodega near the centre of town, where they produce Tio Pepe brand sherry. The company was founded in 1835 when Manuel Maria Gonzalez Angel, under advice from his uncle the famous Tio Pepe, founded a winery in Jerez. Soon after he created a partnership with an Englishman, Robert Blake Byass, creating the current family-run company which now exports to around 150 countries worldwide. It's not so much a vineyard, which are out in the surrounding countryside, but rather a large storage area where the important distillation processes take place. We hopped on a train for a tour of the grounds before being ushered into one of the
the Apostlesmassive cellars, it was so cold inside compared to the warmth outside. Here we got to admire the dusty barrels of sherry and watched a propaganda video, which was mostly concerned with telling us just how successful Tio Pepe is by an actor cheesily pretending to be the founder of the company. We did get an explanation of the distillation process etc, most of which I've forgotten. We walked from there through a small village to another cellar, containing an enormous 3,500 gallon cask named after Christ, flanked by 12 slightly smaller casks named after the 12 apostles. Further on, we found a small cup of sherry on the floor with miniature ladders leading up to the rim. This was all for the mice who roamed the bodega, and sure enough we got to see a mouse go up for a drink while we were there!
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